Ashes to Ashes
by Jemennuie
Summary: Theo Nott's reflections before his mother's death and during her funeral. One-shot.


**L'Enfer C'est les Autres**

Theo isn't sure when his mother disappears from the world of arts projects and spilled glue and the smell of baking--viscous dabs of scraps of color and warm spring days in the dead of winter--to the ancient creak of the rocking chair by the slate stones of the fireplace, crumbling coughs and cold veins accentuating her withering hands.

He just knows that one day he realizes he can't remember a time when she wasn't bed-ridden, when flashes of toothy white porcelain and the ticklish exhalings of her laughter brushing his ear had not yet been replaced with papery creases lining her mouth and the limp rising and falling of her chest (and he can't recall when--the days a polished mirror to his probing childish hands until all there is is the present and the oily smudges from his desperately searching fingers).

He is sitting by her bedside that day--her skin the color and texture of dust, the room an oppressive mass of stale air--when he must have left the window open or the door open because a breeze, light and cool and cruel, lazily wafts through the room, and when it has loitered long enough (a vicious, self-satisfied greasy mass of a thief) it has stolen something from his mother, replaced the shine to her eyes with the sickening colorlessness of the shroud that has been draped over the entire household.

Other people don't seem to see the shroud, though, don't feel the pinpricks of dust in the air that require, that demand a hush to the expansive emptiness of the rooms. The vibrations of the house cry out against the large audience present for the funeral reception, but only Theo seems to notice.

He collides with the bony bodies and endlessly tall legs of attendees as he weaves his way through the squirming crowd of people, is caught by the slippery hands of overly-perfumed women, the scratchy whiskers of older men, the sticky gazes of uncomprehending children who are busy licking crumbs of the reception's food from their fingers. He hears one word over and over again (sharp and jagged, a bur, a dagger that has latched onto his being and cannot be removed) but only knows that the word is awkward and heavy between his tongue and his teeth, shards of glass that ensure that whenever the word manages to leave his mouth it does so in a mangled, barely recognizable form

(but he wouldn't want to say it anyway, because that oily conglomerate of letters represents an illness, the greasy mass of a thief that robbed his mother of smiles and laughter and life)

Words from the well-intentioned attendees fill the room, raucously echoing off of the high ceilings, drilling through his skull and grating against his ear drums until they are raw and red, until the room is as stifling and suffocating as the heavy wool of his high-collared dress robes clawing against his neck, until he simply can't take it anymore and he flees the head-splitting room of echoes and words and disrupted shrouds.

The attic is quiet and still, a peaceful blanket of dust softly clinging to his fingertips as they brush against the stairs' railing. A disperse grey cloud is blown into the attic's cold air as he takes a seat on the faded wood floor, the texture like moths' wings clinging to his formal robes.

He doesn't know how long he sits there, hugging his knees to his chest and wordlessly breathing in the silence, all the while condemning the robustness of the receptions' attendees, until he is no longer condemning their robustness, but the attendees themselves, because within the past few hours he has grown to despise them, to despise everyone who thinks that the loss of his mother can be wished away with pleasant-sounding words. He is only broken from his reverie when the slight tremors of the floor cause the dust to take flight again, and he feels, doesn't hear, the long sigh issuing from the top of the attic's stairs as his father regards him.

He doesn't want to hear his father's lumbering words crack the singular stillness, whether they be words of well-intentioned comfort, or a mild scolding for abandoning his social duties, and he turns away, burying his face against his knees. For a few moments he feels nothing but the attic's cold air, when it is unexpectedly replaced by an encircling warmth, and as Theo returns his father's hug, nestles himself into his father's strong, comforting arms and doesn't let go, he thinks that _maybe people aren't so bad after all_.

…

A/N: Written for tat1312's Francophone Author's Quote Challenge; my quote was "Hell is other people" from Sartre's "No Exit." Constructive criticism and general feedback is always appreciated!


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